Monday, November 8, 2010

Repast is a small coffee shop in Mount Baker. I am frequently there eating quiche and drinking tea or coffee. My two year old daughter has consumed many glasses of milk at Repast and swears by the chocolate croissants and blueberry muffins. They serve lunch, pre-made sandwiches (or made to order), made to order salads, quiche and an assortment of pastries along with a variety of juices, coffee and tea. All the pastries are made on site, fresh daily. The tea is Harney & Sons. Your food will be served to you on real dishes and they will bring things to your table after you order at the counter.

They usually have two types of quiche. Sometimes it has a custard texture and sometimes the eggs are more prominent. Today I had a tomato and zucchini quiche which had a creamy custard consistency. The crust was flaky, thin and perfect. There are usually several different sandwiches available, ham, dill chicken, turkey and classic plain baguette sandwiches as well.

There is a small bin of toys that there really isn't room for but they have it there anyway which I think is sweet. There are small potted plants in old tea tins on the windowsills. Outdoor seating on the sidewalk in front is available if the weather permits. It is a wonderful place to stop and take a break from whatever it is you need a break from.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Feieraband is a German pub in south lake union. They have what they describe as traditional german food and what I described as a nice selection of on tap German beers. There are big wooden tables that you will probably share with other people but they are set up in a way that you can still sit and have your own meal and conversation. It is a loose pub environment with sometimes dismissive, sometimes super friendly wait staff. There are usually only two guys working in the kitchen but the food comes out fast. There are a couple of discreet televisions playing sports on the wall. They serve hard alcohol along with their beer but it is definitely not their specialty. If you look around the room you will see every table covered with ludicrously large glasses of beer. The beer comes in three sizes, .3 L, .5 L and 1 L sizes all served in authentic glassware.

Our first lunch at Feieraband consisted of an attentive waiter, two of the great eighteen on tap german beers, a sub-par beet salad and a sub-par chicken sandwich. Our second lunch was an attentive waiter, three great on tap german beers, some 'so weird they were interesting' deep fried pickles and a sub-par salmon caesar that was a special. Our dinner was a waitress that took our orders but turned away before we finished talking (repeatedly), two great on tap german beers, some great french fries and a pounded pork cutlet sandwich with coleslaw that was odd.

They serve a lot of their dishes with these strongly flavored mustard and ketchup mixes that are sometimes dumped over the food and sometimes not. There might be a method to this but I didn't see it. I saw an order of fries with ketchup spilled haphazardly on top and my order with ketchup on the side, in a little dish. Their beet salad was just kind of flavorless. It doesn't seem super hard to make a good beet salad but this one managed to be both dry and bland minus the few delicious bites of beets, cheese and nuts (most of it was undressed lettuce leaves). The chicken sandwich was not bad but just extremely plain. The deep fried pickles were breaded and deep fried, served with their ever present mustards. I liked the pickles but I love pickles in general and I also love mustard so I state this with trepidation on the risk that it is taken as a general recommendation.

The food just isn't that good here but I still like this place. I like the beer, the low-key environment. I like the fried pickles because they are weird. They have a good pretzel and great french fries. Go for the beer and eat some food if you need to.

Monday, November 1, 2010

It was my mother-in-law's birthday so I made boeuf a la nicoise: braised beef stew with red wine, tomato, olives and buttered noodles from Sunday Suppers at Lucques, written by Suzanne Goin. I love this cookbook. It is constructed as complete suppers that will feed six people family style. I have cooked entire suppers from the book as well as individual dishes. The cookbook has some inaccurate and incomplete instructions but the final product (after tussling with the inaccuracies) are phenomenal. The details in the cookbook are also very granular which I realize is in direct contrast with my statement about the inaccuracies but that's the way it is. For example, "add the crushed tomatoes and cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly to coat the vegetables." A lot of authors would just say to add the crushed tomatoes and stir for 2 minutes without explaining why. Or they might say add the crushed tomatoes and stir for a few minutes. The cookbook is also broken down into seasonal meals which makes finding fresh ingredients and serving 'seasonally appropriate fare' (who wants beef stew in July?) much easier. I give this recipe two positively beaming thumbs up.

Thank you for visiting Salt on the Table; my name is Sonia and I am the author. This blog chronicles the portion of my life that is devoted to food and what inspires me in the kitchen. The recipes I create, cookbooks I read, restaurants I visit, food I encounter on my travels, as well as some occasional musings on food.